Dominic Cavendish reviews Medea at the West Yorkshire Playhouse

Were it not for the extensive programme notes accompanying Femi Elufowoju's revival of Medea, it would be hard to tell that this young director had boldly ventured to plant Euripides's tragedy within the precise context of Nigerian Yoruba culture.

Indistinct jungle noises may lurk in Mic Pool's ominous, throbbing sound design, and Ruari Murchison's imposing set, which situates much of the action on a stone platform - circular, raised and raked - may have the aura of a sanctified space in the midst of a clearing. But, when the black British cast, dressed mainly in simple, uncolourful robes with occasional tribal adornments, open their mouths, it's Euripides's words, as translated by Alistair Elliot, that issue forth.

Interesting though it is to note that the Yoruba lived in independent city states and honoured a vast pantheon of deities, much like the ancient Greeks, such affinities have little direct bearing on the plight of Medea and her terrible act of revenge upon the perfidious Jason.

Appeals are frequently made to the gods in this play, and the distinction between Jason, the mortal warrior, and Medea, the Sun-descended follower of Hekate who forsook her supernatural nature out of love, is an important one; yet the cruel crux of the acrimonious division between them couldn't be more down to earth. Jason has sexually betrayed the woman who gave up everything, even sacrificing her own brother, on his behalf - and the infanticidal rage that sweeps over Medea as a consequence finds its echo in break-ups and divorces the world over.

If the Yoruban element adds little, then, by the same token it doesn't subtract much from the play's innate visceral power. Far from creating a muddled Medea, Elufowoju's directorial hand is so sure, his scenic composition so exactingly still, that the production maintains a transfixing power throughout.

Her entrance heralded by a series of bloodcurdling wails, Tanya Moodie's statuesque Medea chillingly suggests a woman who has swathed her rage behind a surface of absolute calm and clear-headed reason. For a moment, as she presses lingering kisses along the arms of Elufowoju's manfully stern Jason, you glimpse the still-burning embers of her devotion.

But the calculating desire to cause maximum destruction has seized her heart, sending her servants into aghast writhings, and, as Moodie's fiendish mother stands motionless on high, still dripping blood over the corpses of her two children, you realise that her story could probably be subject to any cultural transposition and still ring terrifyingly true.